"fair and balanced" discussions

Discourse is setup here so that a user can’t post very short text replies, “This” for example. But an image macro with the word “this” is permitted. I have a vague and perhaps inaccurate memory of an explanation that the minimum post length was to encourage actual discussion.

Besides that the only objection to macros I can immediately think of is one that I mentioned years ago that they result in using up mobile data caps rather quickly. Of course the answer to that is simply to read the BBS from a non mobile device.

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And a picture is worth a thousand etc.




And the classic



Well OK then. Guess that changed. Or maybe my memory was just completely wrong. Happens sometimes.





There’s ways around it, I mean. You just need to be a bit clever about how you do it, is all. Watch:










As long as the context is shared on both ends, sure. I’m in a minority use case of having been away from most US pop culture a few decades and so I don’t always have any idea of the context of the image macro. Same for the back and forth with Japanese boards/twitter or IRL discussions with non-Westerners.

But then again I can just happily scroll past these things most of the time. With the exception of when its a direct reply and its something I dont understand. Those cases where I’ve tried to ask for clarification or “what does that mean?”, sometimes it is perceived as if I’m back handedly challenging the person who replied with only a macro.

Anyhow, off to work now, I’ll pick up this thread later when I’m back to uncapped bandwidth.

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ETA: I know I’m getting likes for this, but really not surprised that it’s not landing as I intended. There’s some deep denial going on here.


At the risk of revealing the magician’s secrets, you can post your short words and then follow them with invisible html entity codes, like a non-breaking space. The message editor does not interpret the code but does count the characters that make it, but they don’t appear in the final message.


I’m just saying that if this is an “echo chamber” it is a pretty anemic one where you get the opportunity to re-evaluate your ignores every four months. So it is striking a balance between “can people (including myself) change” and “nobody should have to listen to this drivel ever again”.

As with much of politics you don’t have a fair solution until everyone is a little bit unhappy.


This is sad.

As for image-only posts, it seems to me that some are positive (I would include the “this” posts here, sorry @waetherman!), some are interesting, but some are simply ways of saying “you’re a jerk” or “your argument is crap”. I don’t recall if community guidelines permit the latter text posts.

I’ve occasionally posted sea lion images when someone from the “actually” crowd entered a discussion, but I decided to stop, because all it serves to do is goad the poster into doubling down, which doesn’t move the conversation forward. The most “productive” thing it might do is make the poster feel bad, but how is that a laudable goal?

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I said this back forever ago, but the mod policy on those is that if they add something to the conversation, we’ll leave them there, but if they appear to have been placed expressly to antagonize, then they’ll be eaten appropriately.

If images are speech, then they need to follow the same guidelines as speech as well.


That’s great, but I’m not sure I know what it means. For example:

they appear to have been placed expressly to antagonize

Is this from the POV of the person who is/might be antagonized, or are we reading intent into the poster, or is there some independent scale?

For example, suppose a Jordan Peterson cultist posts something that at least looks like an argument, with the conclusion “therefore we are lobsters.” Person A posts, “your argument is crap” (and nothing else). At the same time person B posts an image of someone rolling their eyes (and nothing else). To me these look like the same post. I gather from your second sentence that you would treat them the same, but then what? The people who posted them might have simply wanted to point out that the argument was crap, or might have wanted to annoy Lobster Man, or might have wanted to amuse other BB readers, or something else. In any of these cases it is a stretch to say that they add to the conversation, since (a) they seem possibly designed to simply shut it down, and (b) even if not they are only counterarguments in the sense of the famous Python sketch. (My own reaction is usually to find that the post adds to the conversation if I disagree with Mr. Lobster, but possibly feels like goading otherwise.)

Alternately, Lobster Man might reasonably feel attacked, does that mean he gets to complain that the posts are there to antagonize?

If it sounds like I’m expecting a particular answer here, or trying to force one, I’m really not. Speaking as a professional logician, I don’t trust logic in these situations, and think working through scenarios is more useful than stating axioms.


This is no different than any other speech here - readers interpret the response and flag or not based on their take on the post. Moderators do the same.

This increases the chance that ambiguous images, especially without text, will be removed, yes. But such is the nature of the choice to communicate via images to begin with. :slight_smile: